John Murphy

John Murphy at the opening of his exhibition, “Left Front: Radical Art in the ‘Red Decade'” exhibition in Chicago, later in NYC.

Book Designer, Editor, Artist, and Illustrator.

John Murphy grew up in Wisconsin where the harsh winters allowed for plenty of indoor leisure time to draw. His artistic inspirations include such masters of the line as Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Gorey, Harry Clark, and Honoré Daumier. He is currently a PhD candidate in Art History at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) working on a dissertation about the utopian-socialist dimensions of the Arts and Crafts movement. At the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (Northwestern University) he curated an exhibition of lithographs by William Gropper (Blacklisted: William Gropper’s Capriccios) and co-curated with Dr. Jill Bugajski The Left Front: Radical Art in the “Red Decade, 1929-1940.

John looks forward to editing and collating Idylls Press’s “Utopian Visions” series (launch date: Summer 2015) featuring new critical editions of works by classic authors such as William Morris and Edward Bellamy.